Today we have a foretaste and proof of something that you must always keep in your mind.  Something that will bring comfort to you in sorrow and strength when you are weak:  that Christ is coming to resurrect all the dead, that He comes to restore everyone to complete health of soul and body, and, at the same time, to restore us to perfect health in community with one another.  Just look at today’s Gospel:  the pious man Jarius’ daughter was ill; Jarius petitions Christ to heal her; she then dies; but Christ restores her spirit to her body, and her to her parents.  Christ revived her and brought her back into loving union with her family.   This is what God promises to all of us: as He Himself said: “I am the resurrection and the life.  He who believes in me will live, even though he dies; and whoever lives and believes in me will never die.” (St. John 11:25)  

And the coming resurrection is more than just a restoration of spirit to body, it is a perfecting recreation.  The moments of physical vitality and mutual love that we treasure so dearly are just hints and shadows of the vitality and love that await us.  St. Paul shares this Good News in his letter to the Romans:

1. Listen, I tell you a mystery: We will not all sleep, but we will all be changed— in a flash, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, the dead will be raised imperishable, and we will be changed. For the perishable must clothe itself with the imperishable, and the mortal with immortality. When the perishable has been clothed with the imperishable, and the mortal with immortality, then the saying that is written will come true: "Death has been swallowed up in victory”. (Romans 15: 51-54)
   

This is the road that Christ travels, and that we travel through Him.  But what is it that happens on the way?  Today’s Gospel describes two things that happen on the road to the restoration of Jarius’ daughter.  They can help us as we walk this same road toward the General Resurrection.

First, there is the healing of the woman with the issue of blood.
She had been suffering from this infirmity for twelve years.  She was destitute from her search for a cure.  She was in pain.  So she sought out Christ.  She found Christ on the road, as He was on his way to Jarius’ house.  She reached out to Him, and the combination of His physical presence and her faith healed her.  He saw her, blessed her, and gave her peace.  What a beautiful encounter!  Wouldn’t you like to see such a thing?  Last week, Archbishop Antony reminded us that we are to be the Gospel; that we may be the only Christ that people see and hear.  The woman received healing because she was able to find Christ. 

This area is full of people in need of healing.  Full of people who have spent their fortunes on false cures.  People who are looking for an authentic cure.  [They are] seeking out the real Christ.  Would they find Him in us?  Would they recognize Christ in us?  What kind of Gospel do we share?  I don’t mean the one that stands on the center of the altar, or the one that sits in your prayer corner, but rather the one that we really share; the one we share with how we live our lives, with how we treat one another, with how we treat strangers.  Christ is self-sacrifice and love: are we?  Christ is the “New Adam”, the one that exhibits and shares every “fruit of the spirit” (e.g. love, joy, peace, longsuffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control – Galatians 5: 22). 

Are we like that, or do we still walk in the flesh as did the old Adam (with adultery, fornication, uncleanness, lewdness, idolatry, sorcery, hatred, contentions, jealousies, outbursts of wrath, selfish ambitions, dissensions, heresies, envy, murders, drunkenness, revelries, and the like – Galatians 5:19).  If we want to witness Christ, both as individuals and as a Church, then, as St. Paul says “let us not become conceited, provoking one another, envying one another.” (Galatians 5: 26)  If we gossip about one another, if we provoke one another, if we refuse to forgive one another, if we bring anything but love and longsuffering to our relationships with one another, then we are not the real Gospel; we are not the real Christ; we are but an abomination. 

Christ brings healing to all He encounters on the road to the Resurrection.  Abomination brings pain and suffering to all it encounters on the road to damnation.  We are called to be Christ to the world: this requires our mutual love and sacrifice.  Otherwise we are like all the other charlatans that the woman met in her twelve years of suffering. 

The Second thing that happened on the road was that Jarius’ daughter died. 
Jarius was a faithful man.  He expected Christ to heal his daughter from her illness – after all, “what else would a loving God do?”  But instead, she died from her illness.  This is a vital lesson: Christ brings the one thing needful, but it isn’t always what you think it should be.  Later in the Gospel lesson, Jarius understands.  He understands when he holds his living daughter in his arms.  You have the fullness of the faith at your disposal, so you should already understand. 

Let me paint the picture of this at its most dire; at its most difficult: this week we have been commemorating the 75th year since the tragedy of the Holodomor, a time when one out of every four Ukrainians was purposely starved to death, when those who survived watched helplessly as one out of every three of their children died a slow and agonizing death.  When abomination, under the guise of progress, did its best to destroy the love and test the longsuffering of Christian people.  How can sanity endure such a thing?  How can faith possibly persevere?  There is only one true answer to the havoc that abomination wreaks in this world:  that through the suffering and resurrection of Jesus Christ; “The body is sown in corruption, [but] it is raised in incorruption. It is sown in dishonor, [but] it is raised in glory. It is sown in weakness, [but] it is raised in power.” (1 Corinthians 15: 42-58).  We preserve our sanity in the midst of suffering through faith in the Resurrection of Jesus Christ [and ours to follow].

And through living in His love, we like Him; we AS HIM; will bring healing, comfort, and peace to those we meet along the road.

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.